“The chin-spiked one? But what does he have to do with”
“Just enough, apparently. He’s looking for what everyone around here seems to be looking for.”
Cunningham shrugged. “And what would that be, sir?”
Pryce’s pointed at the mongrelman. “Unless I miss my guess, it’s what he’s guarding.” The other two monsters looked at the master of concealment.
“Geeeee-off-freeeee!” Devolawk whistled. “Show usssss!”
“Show us what the humans are after,” Cunningham repeated urgently. “Now!”
The section of wall the mongrelman led them to was not very impressive in and of itself. In fact, it looked just like any other part of the cave until Pryce noticed a bulge near the floor and another just below the stone ceiling. Covington looked at the mongrelman, who was jabbing his finger repeatedly at a place high on the wall. Cunningham and Devolawk looked at each other in confusion, then looked to Pryce expectantly. The human had no intention of disappointing them.
He stepped up onto the bottom protuberance, which was effectively a cleverly sculpted step designed to appear as a natural part of the rock. Pryce grabbed the top protrusion, which had been chiseled into a seemingly natural rock shape, but was actually a rung that could be held onto easily.
Slowly and carefully Pryce pulled himself up the length of the wall until he found himself looking down a cunningly camouflaged hole cut through the rock. Looking up from the cave floor, it would have been invisible, because its lower lip was carved upward, like a tankard set high in the wall. Until someone looked down at it, there was no hint that the opening was even there. Pryce stared down into the hole until he could see no farther.
He looked down at the mongrelman. “Is this your doing?” The beast shook its hoary head from side to side in reply. Pryce turned to look back down the tube-shaped hole. It couldn’t have been more than three inches in circumference and had to be at least three feet deep. Pryce placed his eye directly against the opening.
Pryce could just make out the other side of the tube. It ended inside a larger enclosure, one that did not have a rock floor, but Pryce couldn’t tell for sure what it was. He couldn’t make out the details because something was obscuring his vision partway down the rock pipe. There was some sort of grating in the way.
“Cunningham?” Pryce said, lowering himself carefully down to the rock floor. “I wonder if you would do me a small favor.”
“Yes, sir, of course. How can I be of service?”
Pryce smiled tightly. “I need you to use your full jackal night vision, but without developing an overwhelming urge to open any of my arteries. Do you think you could do that?”
Cunningham found himself staring at Pryce’s neck much the same way he would look at a succulent roast. He grew noticeably pale. Then he swallowed. He looked to the other monsters for support. “I shall endeavor to do my utmost,” he promised shakily.
Pryce was fascinated by the change that came over the man-beast after he had lifted himself up to the hole in the wall. Suddenly his skin sprouted red, orange, and black hair, which mingled into a mat of fur from his upper lip to his forehead. His left eye changed with it, turning from a human sphere to an animal’s black orb. Its center seemed to glow yellow, and he… it… snarled menacingly.
Pryce stepped back nervously, but when the jackalwere dropped lightly to his feet and turned to face him, his face had transformed back to the innocuous features of the impoverished but cultured traveler. “Most unusual,” he commented.
‘Yes?”
“There is indeed a chamber of some sort on the other side of the rock tube.” ‘Yes?”
“But there is also a grating of some sort.”
“So far we’re in perfect agreement,” Pryce said impatiently, “but I thought it was worth risking unleashing your animal side for corroboration.” Cunningham looked at him with one eyebrow raised before Pryce exclaimed, “Details, man, details! What does the grating look like?”
‘Well, actually, it looks like letters.”
Pryce turned to the others. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Which letters?”
‘They are oddly shaped, sir, like some sort of artistic script. I could make out a U with a line over it… an underlined V… the top half of an 0,… and a P^with rounded bottoms.”
“U-V-O-W,” Pryce repeated the letters aloud. ” You vow’? You vow to do what?”
“Whatever vow it is, sir,” interrupted Cunningham, “it certainly seems to be a code of some sort.”
“Or a lock…” Pryce mused, fingering his cloak clasp. “Of course!” he realized. “A key!” He looked down at the clasp, seeing the letters D and B upside down and backward. “In a city of wizards, what sort of entry would you devise to protect your most valuable possessions?”
“One a sorcerer could not circumvent,” Cunningham said. “A magical lock.”
“Not magical,” Pryce insisted, realizing the clasp did not glow as it neared the opening. “No matter how great a magician you are, there will always be a greater one. No, to truly protect your valuables from sorcerers, the lock needs to be mechanical!”
“Mechanical?” Cunningham repeated as if the word was distasteful. “Can you open it, sir?”
Pryce held the cloak clasp between his thumb and index finger. He twisted it this way and that. “Not yet. I don’t have all the letters yet. But I think I will, very soon.” He turned to the misshapen ones. “I promise,” he said, “to do everything in my power to free you from your bondage. You have the word of Darlington Blade.” He marveled at the way it was becoming steadily easier to pass himself off as Blade.
The mongrelman tried to smile, his grotesque lips twisting and spasming. The broken one, however, fell to the joints that served as his knees, tumbling off-balance to lean heavily against the cave wall. “The skyyyyy,” it choked out. “The eeeeearth… to be reeeeeleeeeased…”
“But I need you to help me,” Pryce insisted, cutting off the creature’s agonized longing. “Keep our meeting secret from anyone, or anything, you make contact with. Continue to guard this antechamber, but not from me. Can you do that?” The two creatures nodded. “Good. Now, Geoffrey, show me where you found me.”
The mongrelman lurched down the cavern, and the others followed.
CHAPTER NINE
Pryce Covington wasn’t particularly surprised when they returned to the very rock in the wall that had moved just prior to his being knocked unconscious behind Schreders’s restaurant. It turned out that the flattened rock was a cleverly designed opening to a cave that ran from behind Schreders At Your Service to a patch of earth between the Lallor Wall and the Mark of the Question.
With a push from the other side, the mongrelman opened the partition, showing Pryce that the flat portal section of the rock was attached to the rest of the stone wall by two cunningly designed hinges, made to look like elongated pebbles. There was just enough room for Pryce to wriggle out.
Pryce quickly surveyed the small area behind the eating and drinking establishment, making sure it was empty and no kitchen staff member was watching before he hastily returned to the small tunnel opening. “I’ll be back,” he quietly assured Devolawk and the mongrelman. “Don’t lose hope. Now, quickly, hide yourselves and let me speak to the Jackal.”
The misshapen creatures moved back, andeventually, reluctantlyCunningham appeared at the portal and gazed out at the moonlight of Lallor. Cunningham reacted like an animal seeing the sky for the very first time. “Areare you mad?” he gasped. “I cannot accept this! The longing!” There was wonder in his expression and tone, but also agony, since he now finally saw the comfort and serenity he had been missing in all his years of wandering and slaughter.
Pryce pushed his head halfway into the opening to block the torturing view. “Be strong, my dangerous aide,” he contended. “And above all, don’t unleash you magical gaze.”
“It… would… serve… you… right,” the jackalwere grunted angrily, only just managing to avoid adding “sir.”